Philadelphia’s Italian Market is a space teeming with life and commerce. Everyone in Philly has a food story associated with this market. But look closer, and this market tells the story of immigrants’ economic movement and the hope that this movement is an upwards one. Initially settled by Italian immigrants in the 1880s, today, this market is dominated by LatinX communities. There is a hierarchy of space; the outer roadside stalls are for newer immigrants, while the brick-and-mortar stalls are for older, more established immigrant communities. Race and class spatialities play out in the everyday informal haggling for prices and goods. For me, this photograph represents both those discriminating spatialities and migrants’ hopes that engaging in semi-formal commerce will lead to economic upward mobility. Taking this picture in black and white also allowed me to compare this activity with older photographs of this space – the equipment, the goods, the storage, and vendors appear to be frozen in time, comparable in this medium with older photographs of the space.
Cultural Geography Specialty Group 